Ethiopia

In this column, Karine Jacquemart, Forest Project Leader for Africa at Greenpeace International, and Anuradha Mittal Executive Director of the Oakland Institute, argue that the land rush unleashed around the world to own and exploit Earth’s natural bounty is not only fierce and unfair, but increasingly fatal, with lands, homes and forests bulldozed and cleared for foreign investors and livelihoods shattered.

In this column, Karine Jacquemart, Forest Project Leader for Africa at Greenpeace International, and Anuradha Mittal Executive Director of the Oakland Institute, argue that the land rush unleashed around the world to own and exploit Earth’s natural bounty is not only fierce and unfair, but increasingly fatal, with lands, homes and forests bulldozed and cleared for foreign investors and livelihoods shattered.

Executive Director of the Oakland Institute Anuradha Mittal and her team have worked for years on land, food and environment issues in regions around the Earth. Oakland Institute recently joined the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in exposing World Bank actions involving land grabs/acquisitions by foreign investors in Ethiopia which have resulted in tens of thousands of small farmers becoming forcibly evicted from their land.

In this column, Karine Jacquemart, Forest Project Leader for Africa at Greenpeace International, and Anuradha Mittal Executive Director of the Oakland Institute, argue that the land rush unleashed around the world to own and exploit Earth’s natural bounty is not only fierce and unfair, but increasingly fatal, with lands, homes and forests bulldozed and cleared for foreign investors and livelihoods shattered.

For several years, the Ethiopian government has engaged in a process known as “villagization.” The government uses eminent domain to claim lands, mainly for large-scale commercial agriculture. As a result, people in the tens of thousands continue to be evicted from their ancestral homes. Some villagers have testified that they were removed at gunpoint. The California-based think tank, the Oakland Institute has produced a report from years of research titled We Say the Land is Not Yours: Breaking the Silence Against Forced Displacement in Ethiopia. Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute, joins us to discuss their findings and the Ethiopian government’s response to the report.

The response from the Ethiopian embassy to our report, We Say the Land is Not Yours, and the Guardian article Ethiopians talk of violence and land grabs as their land is earmarked for foreign investors, makes unfounded allegations about the work and methodology of the Oakland Institute.

ADDIS ABABA, Apr 25 2015 (IPS) - The 28 Ethiopian migrants of Christian faith murdered by the Islamic State (IS) on Apr. 19 in Libya had planned to cross the Mediterranean Sea in search of work in Europe.

Commenting on the killings to Fana Broadcasting Corporation (FBC), Ethiopian government spokesperson Redwan Hussien urged potential migrants not to risk their lives by using dangerous exit routes.

First-person testimony published Tuesday tallies the human cost of Ethiopia’s “villagization” program, in which tens of thousands of people have been forced from their ancestral homes to make way for large-scale commercial agriculture.

The findings were reported by the California-based Oakland Institute in a study titled “We Say the Land Is Not Yours: Breaking the Silence Against Forced Displacement in Ethiopia.”